


The Abyssal God

by Schnikeys_Discuss (Schnikeys)



Series: Clockie's Meta [24]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Analysis, Archived from radioactivesupersonic Blog, Character Analysis, Gen, Nonfiction, Originally Posted on Tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-30
Updated: 2019-03-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:34:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27067198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schnikeys/pseuds/Schnikeys_Discuss
Summary: "This would make sense if Radiance isn’t the first god of Hallownest, but the second one."
Series: Clockie's Meta [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1974223
Kudos: 16





	The Abyssal God

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ClockworkRainbow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkRainbow/gifts).



Anonymous asked: All this talk about the Shade Lord/Blackwyrm being associated with the ocean, and especially hydrothermal vents, makes me wonder if the void is the original source for all the life in Hallownest, honestly.

* * *

There’s some good implication in favor of yes, actually!

The Radiance calls Ghost “Ancient enemy” implying she did battle with a void-wielding entity before. However, the only implication of the Blackwyrm during the Pale King’s reign is the White Defender’s journal entry, with Ogrim musing about a singular “Battle of the Blackwyrm”.

As I’ve pointed out in a previous post, Hallownest is also covered in ammonite shells, which are ancient sea creatures. And outside of the King’s artificial void constructs, the moulds, who seem to collapse rapidly when separated from their confining shells, there’s also seemingly natural void creatures. The snails wield, and dissolve into, dark magic- the only void spell you don’t get from them is the Abyssal Shriek, which would ostensibly seem to be born of the vessels- their untapped “voices” yearning for release. (or it could be other entities we have no other evidence of). And the Collector- it looks sort of like a Kingmould, but, it doesn’t seem to be- unlike the moulds, it doesn’t fall apart without any armor holding it together.

The description for the Void Idol, which you only get access to as you’re angling towards “Embrace The Void”, states that according to Lemm, “those ancient bugs” worshiped the darkness below the kingdom. There was once a void god.

The void totems and arcane eggs are considered harmless to the modern age. The Pale King outright has void totems in his palace- possibly as ornamentation. He tampered with the void, took great interest in studying it, shaped his personal guard out of it. That’s a staggering contrast to the salt-and-burn quarantine policies he seems to have taken to the Radiance, who he did consider an enemy.

This suggests something: to the Radiance, the abyss is a dangerous ancient enemy that she is posed to fight against. Through her edicts, as we hear them by dream nailing Myla in her later stages of infection, and by the cut dream nail dialogue of the Hollow Knight, it’s clear that she’s at least a little afraid of Ghost- she despises “the empty one” and calls for her purloined subordinates to “kill it”. There’s cut dialogue from the Moss Prophet spelling out just how awful Radiance and her worshipers consider the vessels:

> Emptiness is a hateful thing! A vile thing! Kill the empty ones! Tear them to pieces! Suffer them not to bask in the light of this world!

This would make sense if Radiance isn’t the first god of Hallownest, but the second one. Her anathema to the void would also make sense that seemingly the seat of her power was the Crystal Peak- where her statue remains. She tried to live on the very pinnacle of the world, the furthest point from the Abyss as possible- because that was where her enemy lived. Like the Pale King eventually attempted on her, she usurped and tried to kill her predecessor.

The Blackwyrm, retreating, began to fade. If we assume the Blackwyrm is the huge blinking creature inside the Lifeblood dream in the Abyss, Godseeker never acknowledges them or comments on them the way they do Unn, another fading god. And yet, they appear in Godhome anyway, having crept in seemingly without tuning…. much as Ghost did.

The implication would seem to be the Blackwyrm has been fading for a long time. If this is what we see of them, then, they only appear in dream, and not remotely as robustly as the Radiance does- they cannot be interacted with, only glimpsed, watching Ghost from afar.

(On the other hand, if that _is_ the Blackwyrm, it’d suggest they’re not merely the god of the void, but also the god of lifeblood, which further conflates them with primal life- and suggests that they actually do have a handful of scattered believers- Salubra mentions drinking lifeblood is a taboo, and yet, there’s the Blue Child, Joni, described as a kindly heretic)

But if Radiance drove the Blackwyrm to the kingdom’s fringes, by the time the Pale King came along, they were already fading. He would consider Void something not under his domain- a “power opposed” and possibly the “darkness” he sees himself charged to stand against (that darkness may not be Void, but, may simply be a lack of godhood as he understands it). And yet, he sees no problem monkeying with it basically because it’s useful, and specifically as a way to give himself a leg up on the Radiance.

In short- he knows she hates it, and finds that useful in his war against her, but appears to have only interacted with the Blackwyrm once, likely far from their true power, if that affair was over and done with in a single battle that Ogrim seems to remember as a glorious occasion, which would hardly imply it was a devastating massacre. It’d further encourage the Pale King to believe the void was under his control- that he could fetter and confine it. For the Blackwyrm, it may have been their last gasp, or a reactionary lashing out at the second light being that settled so close to it- the Pale King built his palace not in the Abyss itself, but very close, in the Ancient Basin.

Sensible- he doesn’t love the stuff, but it is a subject of great fascination to him, and vital to the construction of much of his instruments and soldiers.

But this makes time interestingly circular here- because this would suggest that the timeline of Hollow Knight both begins and ends with a void god. And it creates some very interesting thoughts on the Blackwyrm, and their relationship with Ghost. Again, if the Abyss Creature is the Blackwyrm, we only see them watching Ghost from afar.

Even if the King sealed the Abyss, several Vessels somehow escaped. And Ghost’s terribly useful late-game power up, the Shade Cloak, appears to have been given to them: they get it from a fountain in the shape of a large dead bug that seems to be offering the bowl of bubbling void to them. And that bug clearly was someone, once- they have dream nail dialogue that changes before and after the Void Heart.

So who were they? And why would they wait down there at the bottom of the world, seemingly dying to wait for Ghost, so that they could give this _to_ Ghost right when they needed it?

Perhaps, in that singular battle, losing not just against the Pale King but against his mortal Great Knights, the Blackwyrm realized they were never recovering from what the Radiance did to them.

So perhaps, instead, they gathered a few key remnants and followers and plunged deeper into dreams, into darkness, and waited. The void became a compliant substance for the Pale King to hew as he pleased.

And eventually, something he shaped decided to shuck its chains- had the will and resolve to fight its way to that empty throne.

Because Ghost is conflated with an awful lot of royal imagery- but they’re also contrasted against the Pure Vessel, who seems much more akin to the Pale King. In a way, both of the game’s Hollow Knights are princes- but one is a prince of light.

(Even the crack that appears on the Pale King’s face when Ghost strikes down his body matches the crack in the Pure Vessel’s face)

But Ghost? Ghost, who tacitly declares themselves Hallownest’s King to get to the void in the first place? Ghost is no heir of the Pale King’s.

Ghost is someone _else’s_ heir.

And they just _may_ have been patiently facilitating Ghost’s ascension in bits and pieces from the shadows. The lifeblood cocoons. Joni’s blessing. The ancient void totems. The ability to bypass the dark gates, and simply flit through obstacles. Even the transformation of the Void Heart.

Someone, who, if Ghost pokes around enough, they can see peaking out of the distant shadows of a dream, watching them progress.

These ideas- that Ghost is either the Blackwyrm’s heir or the Blackwyrm reborn- might not be mutually exclusive, either; after all, Grimm shows us that there are definitely gods that kill themselves to advance a successor that ultimately takes up the mantle of the original, furthering that relationship Bardoon cites between death and transformation for gods.

This might suggest that post Ghost’s ascension, the Blackwyrm might fade away entirely- give up the last of their essence to feed the new-growing void god.

**Author's Note:**

> Analysis originally found here: <https://radioactivesupersonic.tumblr.com/post/183821998465/all-this-talk-about-the-shade-lordblackwyrm-being>


End file.
